A recurrent nova in action. The smaller star, known as a white dwarf, rotates around the giant red star, collecting hydrogen from the larger star. The smaller star eventually sheds the hydrogen in a thermo nuclear explosion in space. This is known as a nova. The white dwarf then will return to its original size.
The time is getting close for Blaze Star to light up the night sky.
No, not that Blaze, who caught the eye of a Louisiana governor by stripping naked on a Bourbon Street stage. But viewers will be able to see the Blaze of the night sky with their naked eyes.
If the conditions are right, the original Blaze Star is expected to be putting on a celestial show at some point between now and September (or maybe even later than that) in a thermonuclear explosion in space called a nova.
The explosion won't destroy the star. It's been there a long time, and it goes through the nova process about every 80 years.
Louisiana Gov. Earl Long and burlesque dancer Blaze Starr are shown together at the Sho-bar on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It's said that Starr, whose real name was Fannie Belle Fleming, adopted the T Coronae Borealis' nickname, Blaze Star, as her stage name.
The Astronomy Club of Baton Rouge has been keeping a constant eye on its progress, and the BREC Highland Road Observatory is planning to open its doors for night viewing after it happens.
But it has to happen first, and when it does, it will be visible to the naked eye for a couple of nights.
Louisiana connection?
In the meantime, Bradley Schaefer offers a dubious Louisiana connection to the star, pointing out that the year was 1946 when this particular star last experienced a nova explosion.
"It's a complicated thing," he says. "Towards the end of the eruption, there was a West Virginia farm girl who went to the big city, and she became a stripper. And she had to choose a stage name, and so she chose the name Blaze Star for the Blaze Star in the sky. But she spelled it S-T-A-R-R, with two Rs, not with one. She knew about this Blaze Star, and she wanted to emulate it."
He laughs.
The white dwarf star in V407 Cygni, shown here in an artist's concept, went nova in 2010. Scientists think the outburst primarily emitted gamma rays (magenta) as the blast wave plowed through the gas-rich environment near the system's red giant star.
"And you know the rest," he says.
If you're guessing that Schaefer is a historian harkening back to the story of Gov. Earl K. Long's scandalous affair with New Orleans stripper Blaze Starr, guess again. Schaefer is professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics in the LSU Department of Physics & Chemistry.
He's been monitoring the Blaze Star since 1974, when he was just a teen, and he can't help being excited about the prospect of observing the star's nova.
"The Blaze Star was still fading up in the sky when Blaze Starr chose the name. And now the Blaze Star is going to be up there again," Schaefer said.
But Fannie Mae Fleming won't be. That was Starr's real name — she died in 2015.
Speaking of real names, the Blaze Star is really a nickname of sorts for the star, whose true identity is T Coronae Borealis, sometimes shortened to T CrB.
A rendering of where the T Coronae Borealis, nicknamed the Blaze Star, will appear in the Northern Crown constellation outside of the Hercules Constellation.
Or, as Schaefer calls it, T Cor Bor.
Schaefer doesn't have an exact date for when the spectacle in the sky will occur. Neither does anyone at Highland Road Park Observatory, Louisiana Art & Science Museum or even NASA.
It'll happen when it happens, and when it does, T Cor Bor will be bright enough in the night sky for everyone to see … if it's not cloudy.
Wait and see
Much of Louisiana hasn't had much luck with celestial happenings in the past year. First, there was the April eclipse, which was eclipsed by layers of clouds for much of the state. That was followed by the aurora borealis in May, whose colors were obscured by, well, layers of clouds.
Now with the nova on deck, will the third time be the charm for this area? Truth is, the weather is just as unpredictable as the exact nova date.
A rendering of the T Coronae Borealis, nicknamed the Blaze Star, in the night sky.
So, all anyone can do is wait and see.
"These things are hard to predict, but it's not going to be a supernova," says Jay Lamm, director of the Pennington Planetarium at LASM. "A supernova happens when a star basically comes to an end of its life, and it explodes out in space and then it either collapses into a white dwarf star or becomes a neutron star or a black hole. But that's not what's going on with the T Coronae Borealis star."
This star's nova is recurrent, again happening every 80 years. It's caused by the binary star system in which T Cor Bor is gravitationally bound to a giant red star, causing the two celestial bodies to orbit around one another.
"The T Coronae Borealis is a white dwarf star," Lamm continues. "As they orbit, they get kind of close to each other, and then the white dwarf star starts to accumulate the hydrogen from the red star. This hydrogen collects on the surface of this white dwarf star, and it gets to a point where enough hydrogen is collected that a thermonuclear reaction happens, and it blows off in space. And when that happens, that's when you see it in the sky. You see that, that nova explosion in the sky."
After that, the white dwarf star will return to its original state, but not before its bright presence is known.
An astronomical chart showing how to locate the Coronae Borealis constellation, where the T Coronae Borealis star is located.
Where to look
"So, normally you wouldn't see this T Coronae Borealis star, but whenever this nova explosion happens, you'll actually be able to see the star, because it'll brighten up to about 1,500 times what it usually is," Lamm says. "So, it goes from a magnitude 10 star down to like a magnitude two star, and I know 10 sounds bigger than two, but it's kind of like a golf game. Two is actually brighter than 10."
Meanwhile, Chris Kersey, manager of the Highland Road Park Observatory, says the observatory is preparing to be open on the nights the T Coronae Borealis is at its brightest. For those opting to look at the star from their back yards, the body's C-shaped constellation, known as the Northern Crown, will be found near the constellation of Hercules.
The star will be blazing just outside the C shape.
"Right now, everyone should be vigilant and get used to looking at that part of the sky," says Elizabeth Hays, project scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Glen Dale, Maryland.
To find Hercules, look in the northern sky and find the constellation's keystone, basically which is four stars forming the corners of a box. According to charts, the Northern Crown should be near that box, the ends of its C-shape pointing upward.
A rendering of T Coronae Borealis, nicknamed the Blaze Star, during the nova. The two stars are constantly rotating around each other, and the smaller star will shed the hydrogen it has collected from the gravitational pull of the red giant star. This happens every 80 years.
"Once you get used to looking at it, you can start to visualize the stars there," Hays says. "Then, when this bright emission — this eruption — appears, it's going to be like adding a new star to this crown. It'll be very bright. It's happened before, so there are variations from eruption to eruption. But we're expecting this one to be as bright as Polaris."
Polaris, the official name of the North Star, roughly stays in the same place in the sky and is a reliable way to find the direction of North.
Lamm, meanwhile, recommends installing the app Delirium, which allows you to look at the sky through your phone and easily locate Hercules and the Northern Crown constellations.
Now, here's something to keep in mind — though earthlings will be seeing the nova happen in what they perceive as real time, the actual event has already happened.
"What's really interesting is that the star is 3,000 light years away, so even though it seems like it's happening now, it actually happened around 3,000 years ago," Lamm says.
So, this will be a new-to-you situation whose exact timing can't be determined, but Schaefer believes that it will be soon.
"The most likely time is right now," he says. "We only know the probability distribution over time when it is likely to happen, and in the past couple months it was substantial, but it didn't come about. And so, we're trying to describe the probability in terms, and with that, the most probable time for it to go off is indeed right now. But there's also a three-month uncertainty in it."
This is why Hays at NASA speculates the nova could happen anywhere between now and a year from now.
Though this rendering presents a different kind of nova, involving a sun-like star, the binary star and nova process basically are the same. The smaller, or dwarf, planet collects hydrogen from the larger and eventually sheds the hydrogen in a thermo nuclear explosion in space called a nova.
"This is potentially very exciting with a little uncertainty on the timeline," she says. "It's going to be spectacular, and though there's some uncertainty on exactly when it will happen, there are some promising observations that suggest it could happen between now and September. Or maybe in the next couple years."
This brings the conversation back to the Blaze Star. Schaefer's research has delved into both the historical and the scientific since he began looking at the star in 1974.
"I recently discovered that there was a report of T Cor Bor that appeared in monastic annals from Augustinian Monks back near Augsburg, Germany, in the year 1217," he says. "So we have eruptions all the way back to 1217. I also discovered the report of the eruption made in unpublished data by an English astronomer, a fairly good one, back in the year 1787. It happened a few days before Christmas then."
Meanwhile, the T Cor Bor acquired its nickname of Blaze Star during the nova of 1866. It stuck, and everyone was taking notice of the blazing star in the sky by the time the 1946 nova happened.
"Even farm girls in West Virginia were noticing it," Schaefer says.
So much that it inspired one to blaze her way across the stage, so to speak.